There is something terribly awry with the social news ecosystem. This is a feeling that's been growing on me over the last few years, and is the reason why I've cut both Reddit and Hacker News (who together constitute pretty much all of "social news") out of my information diet. Although I've mulled over things in various conversations, I've never actually tried to put my feeling of unease in writing, until today. What's spurring me into action is a proposal by Yann LeCun that a model similar to social news be adopted for scientific peer review - self-assembled Reviewing Entities voting on streams of submitted papers, regulated by a reputation system for authors and reviewers. Basically, this is science a la Reddit: complete with subreddits, karma and upboats. I find the idea frankly terrifying.

Interesting post, and what caught my eye was in second last paragraph a basic description of hubski

A big part of the reason I don't use social news anymore is that my existing social networks have become so much more effective at turning up good content. The absolute best source of news for me is simply the set of links shared by the folks I follow on Twitter. I follow people who post interesting content, and whom I trust to act as information filters for me. Most of them share my technical interests, but some are interesting because they are from my home town, or because they share some more esoteric pursuit with me. So, the news stream I see is exactly tailored to me. At the same time, there is also room ideosyncrasy - if someone I follow shares something left-field that tickles their fancy, I'll see it. In turn, I try to be a responsible information filter for those who follow me - I find a link or two worth tweeting on most days.